Many different computing devices such as portable or stationary computer systems, tablet computer systems, smart phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), media players, electronic book (“ebook”) readers and the like have become extraordinarily popular in recent years. Many of these devices incorporate user interfaces that respond to the user's touch, or to other inputs received in a two dimensional space. Examples of input devices that process multi-directional inputs include touch screens, touch pads, directional pads and the like, as well as more conventional mice, joysticks, etc. Many smart phones and tablet computers, for example, have user interfaces that are primarily (if not entirely) designed around touch screens that recognize inputs applied to the display by a user's finger, a stylus, or some other pointing object.
Often, multi-directional user inputs can be tracked over time or space and combined to form a single command commonly called a “gesture”. A horizontal finger swipe, for example, may be recognized within a web browser or ebook reader as a gesture input to change pages, or to move forward or backward in a browsing history. A media player may recognize the same horizontal movement to perform other tasks, such as changing channels, performing a fast forward/rewind operation, or any other tasks as desired. Other gestures may involve vertical movements, rotational movements, taps, presses, holds and/or other user inputs tracked over time or over the multi-directional sensing region of the input device.
Often, however, certain devices may have difficulty in recognizing gestural inputs applied by certain users. While some users may intend to provide gestural inputs, their actual inputs applied to the sensing region of the device may be imperfect, and therefore difficult to recognize. If the user attempts to enter gestures that are not recognized by the input device, the user may become frustrated. Further, variations between different movements applied by different users can lead to gestural constraints that are overly restrictive for certain users, but that are nevertheless unable to recognize gestures produced by other users.
It is therefore desirable to improve recognition of gestures in user inputs detected by touch screens, touch pads, directional pads and/or other multi-directional input devices. These and other desirable features and characteristics will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and this background section.